


Blind Bet

by XtaticPearl



Series: King of Hearts [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BAMF Charlie, BAMFs, Big Brother Gabriel, Big Brother Lucifer, Casinos, Circus, Con Artists, Disguise, Dysfunctional Family, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Lovers, FBI Agent Dean Winchester, Multi, Opposites Attract, Raphael Being a Dick, Sassy Balthazar, Sexual Tension, Team as Family, Tricksters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-23 04:57:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4863977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XtaticPearl/pseuds/XtaticPearl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The infamous Red Halo cost FBI Agent Dean Winchester his job and reputation. Two years later, Dean’s team of ragtag geniuses seeks to destroy the con-artists the only way they can be – conning. But the pros have one final trick up their sleeve and this time, Las Vegas is their battlefield.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blind Bet

Dean Winchester was a psychotic son-of-a-bitch with a loaded gun. He loved the feel of the trigger, the sound of the shot and the sight of hitting through the mark. But most of all, he loved bullet scars.

Some people considered moles as birth-marks. Dean preferred bullet scars. Every time he got one, he got a new life – a rebirth. Each one had a story, unlike the mundane ideas of moles and birth scars.

Like the current one on his right bicep. Look at the beauty of it – the colour of anger, 4 inches long and sharp in shape. Something between a lightning and an arrow-head. The bullet had been fired from 40 feet, pretty close for a missed shot. The other one though, a smooth puncture of his quad – that was a beauty. A good hundred feet away, a 1911 and 10 sec target time. Absolute perfection.

What he hated was the Red Halo – the gang that brought him these scars today.

“You get a kick outta this, don’t ya?” Agent Crowe asked above him, tapping a writing pad against the door of the medical van “The pain, the blood, the burn. You like it when things get messy. Isn’t that right?” The steel-grey eyes held no sense of pity for the injured Dean, but he wasn’t expecting it anyway, so the young officer grinned cheekily.

“Hey, scars are my beauty marks!” he teased, hoisting his blood stained shirt higher for the paramedic to clean up “Also, I don’t chase the bullets. They gun for me. Ain’t my fault if I’m more attractive to criminals, right?”

The older agent and Dean’s father figure rolled his eyes before thrusting a file in his face. “Here,” he clipped “the list of items stolen and the details of all the accounts. I don’t know why you wanted this and I don’t want to either. You got to know though Dean, the bureau isn’t gonna let you pursue this case any further. Not after today.”

Not after today. The 31-year-old cop dropped any pretence of cockiness at the reminder of today’s dark spot. It wasn’t his fault – wasn’t any of their fault – but civilian deaths at such scenarios always fell on the cop’s head. It didn’t matter if he conceded to the robbers’ demands or defied them; the fatalities were always his fault. And today’s deaths had been unexpected even to Dean.

“They broke the rules, Bobby,” he told his friend and mentor bitterly “they had the escape route clear. We couldn’t have caught up the vents even if we beat their clocks. It wasn’t part of the plan. That man wasn’t supposed to be there.”

“But he was and so was the bastard who shot him,” Bobby closed his eyes for a minute “Kid, I know it’s not on you. The bureau knows it damn well too. But Crowley, that bug’s gonna chew you out on this and it’s not gonna be pretty.”

Oh, he knew that. Merino Crowley was the kind of cop you saw in those corny good cop vs bad cop movies. He ate money for breakfast and brains for lunch, but for dinner – oh for dinner he ate credit from any other cop worth his skill.

Well to be fair, he also loaded his own mistakes onto others’ plates, so there was some twisted logic there. But whatever he did, there was one thing constant in Crowley’s days at the bureau – he made Dean’s life hell.

“Think I can get him some nice panties and make up?” he asked Bobby, taking a swig of cheap liquor from his trusted flask.

The older man sighed and shook his head, sharing the whiskey with his protégé.

Apparently, panties and make up weren’t enough. Nothing was enough today. It had taken two stupid mistakes from some rookie thief to end Dean’s career. The higher officials were calling it “collateral damage” to the grievance of the victims’ families. No amount of recommendations or evidence could help him against the ass-kissing desk-chained administration which told him very politely, to shove the thirteen years of service up his ass. He felt remotely relieved at having punched the guy who told him, for making a horrible ‘Number 13’ joke after the announcement.

So now, he had no job, no family because his ex-wife was busy being pregnant with her new husband’s kid and no gun license because he had taken a lousy shot at Crowley after being fired from the force. Really, it didn’t even touch him enough to leave a scar but the wimp was bawling like his guts had torn. And that left Dean as a psychotic son-of-a-bitch without a gun but a bullet in his knee. Rah-fuckin-bah.

He really did hate Red Halo. And he was going to make them pay for everything.

**_At Paradise Residency, Chicago:_ **

One death and two casualties. Castiel was going berserk with rage.

“I told you to stay in the fucking locker and fill the bags,” he shook his older brother by the collar furiously “I told you to keep your stupid head down and shut your stupid mouth. Didn’t I tell you that? I distinctly remember telling these very fucking words!”

“Actually, you weren’t so crass,” Raphael commented from across the room, lounging on the faux-leather sofa “I believe you told ‘Let me handle the front, you complete the transfer of cash.’ I definitely don’t recall anything about stupid heads or mouths.”

“Well that’s because Castiel turns into a cursing machine when he catches sight of blood,” Balthazar reminded his younger brother from the kitchen, sipping on his evening tea while watching the whole scene.

“Or when he watches _Wheel of Fortune_ ,” Raphael nodded solemnly.

“IS NOBODY TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY?!” Castiel blasted as his hold on his gasping brother tightened “We killed a man. A bloody bank official. We left a trail of blood to catch up with us!”

“And we’re going to have another blood-stream if you don’t stop choking Gabe,” Charlie pointed at the rapidly reddening face of the man in Castiel’s hands.

“Cas..Stop..,” Gabriel struggled to form words as his younger brother squeezed the life out of him. He should have been able to break the hold, but the taller man had a hidden strength in his anger. And he was really angry today.

“Castiel! Drop him!” the sharp command from the door was the only thing that helped, because Cas let go of his neck immediately.

“Castiel, what were you doing?” Lucifer, the eldest among them, shut the door and crossed over to his brothers “You would have murdered Gabriel in another 10 seconds.”

“I think..I’m already dead,” Gabriel wheezed from the floor as he tried to fill his lungs with oxygen.

“Don’t tempt me,” Cas warned him with a hard look and stormed off to the balcony.

The sight of the dead man’s vacant brown eyes still lingered in his mind. He gripped the iron railing hard enough for the sharp extension to cut his palm. He could still not feel his heartbeat slow down.

He could feel rather than hear someone enter the windy balcony and stand beside him. He didn’t need to turn to know who it was.

“We broke our promise today, Luce,” he whispered bitterly, eyes still set straight ahead “We killed someone.”

His eldest brother was the closest thing Castiel had to a father. He was his best friend, his first teacher and his confidant, all rolled in one. Lucifer placed his hand on his dearest brother’s shoulder and felt a shred of tension leave his body.

“We had to do it to save our family Cas,” the blond man whispered back, because anything louder would simply be noise “He tried to betray us. If Charlie hadn’t shot him, he would have killed Gabriel. Didn’t we promise to protect our family first?”

It was true. The bank official had been their leak into the vaults and had received a bulk amount as compensation in advance. But when he saw Gabriel with the diamonds in hand, the man’s greed had risen. They hadn’t even known that he had a gun on him. Gabe would have been the dead body if Charlie hadn’t taken the decision of shooting.

“And what about that cop?” the blue eyed younger brother turned to look at his leader “did I have to shoot him too? He wouldn’t have killed any of us.”

“But he would have seen Gabe’s face,” Lucifer justified calmly “Gabriel missed his shot by an inch and you had to take a decision. So you took it. Sometimes, you have to break one promise to keep up the other.”

Cas didn’t agree but didn’t argue either. He remembered the day their father had gone out for a field- job with Luce. The bloodied face and clothes of his elder brother as he had come back home with the news of their father’s death, was something the 13 year old Castiel never forgot. They had got a shitty ceremony from the department and a promise of compensation for the family. They never saw a single penny.

Their mother had died when Cas was nine and their only living relative was their father’s estranged brother, Uncle Merton – an eternally drunk magician. Lucifer had joined Merton’s failing circus and had burnt through his adolescence trying to provide for his siblings. Even as the youngest of the brothers and just a year older to Charlie, Cas was always the first one to help Luce whenever he could. In return, Lucifer loved and protected his youngest brother the most.

They had formed the Red Halo when Cas turned 17 and Lucifer was a 24 year old bartender by day and magician by night. Determined to help out his brother, Castiel had joined the circus Luce was working with at that time and became their knife-throwing specialist. He would practice all the time, whenever he could between his day-job as a janitor at the University.

Life was going steady, when one day, the circus stopped. Just like that, it stopped, all because some cop had bad blood with Merton. The incident had a huge effect on their uncle, whose final act was running through a knife. A furious Lucifer had stolen the cop’s bribe collection and run away with it as revenge. That day, the Nowak family had taken its first step into the con-world. One month later, they had conned their first biggie – a corrupt doctor. And then they never stopped.

Cas stood against the black railing of the open balcony, thinking about how they had risen as a family and a team. He looked at the fading sun and wondered what they would be if they had gotten a normal childhood. He tilted his head to look at Lucifer gazing at the same sun with a calm in his eyes.

“Tell Gabe to ice his neck,” he said after a while, pretending not to notice Lucifer’s small grin.

“I’ll tell Charlene to do it,” he replied, making Cas chuckle. Gabe would be lucky if Charlie didn’t stuff ice cubes down his throat.

There were no apologies exchanged or philosophical discussions after that. The two Nowak brothers simply stood in silence as they celebrated another victory of the Red Halo.

 **Next on Blind Bet:** The setting shifts to two years later. The Red Halo is planning its biggest heist yet. But Dean Winchester is gathering a hand-picked team to nab them. 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I know that I suck at regular updates, but I've got a new alarm set for my fics. I promise to update faster now. Please read and review?


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